The present invention relates to protective equipment for hockey and other such sporting activities. More specifically, the invention relates to protective pants having an interchangeable protective unit.
In recent years, safety has become an issue of increasing importance in professional and amateur sports. Sports such as hockey, that often involve rough physical contact between players, require that the players devote an increased amount of attention towards their protection and physical safety. Thus, it is important that players have proper equipment to protect them from injury during a game.
Hockey pants are one of the most important pieces of protective equipment that hockey players wear. The Hockey pants cover the player""s midsection from the waist to the knees and provide the needed protection to the player""s upper leg and pelvic region so that injury to those areas may be prevented.
Hockey pants are not only worn to protect a player, they are also a very visible piece of equipment. The color of the hockey pants is an integral part of the hockey uniform that designates which team a player belongs to. Often, especially with amateur players, a player will belong to more than one hockey team, which means that for each team a player belongs to, he or she may be required to purchase in the colors of that team. This mean that a given player could have two or three different pairs of hockey pants, each in a different color.
Selling color-specific hockey pants could also be problematic for hockey equipment retailers. Hockey pants are reasonably expensive and it is possible that at the end of a season a retailer will find that say, all the hockey pants in blue and black (which turned out to be the most popular colors of the season) have been sold, but that a significant quantity of red hockey pants are still left over.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,856 (Duval) describes hockey pants having removable padding members. The protective hockey pant disclosed by Duval comprises an outer shell, multiple back padded members and an upper padded member. The upper padded member and the multiple back padded members can be releasably attached to the outer shell so that the shell can be laundered. A disadvantage of the hockey pant disclosed by Duval is that the front padded member, and each individual back padded member is a separate element. This makes removing and inserting the padding members a laborious, time consuming task. It also creates the added difficulty of remembering how each padding member fits back into the outer shell.
An object of the invention is to provide hockey pants that have interchangeable protective padding that is quick and easy to insert and remove from the hockey pant.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a protective-padding unit that combines a plurality of padding elements into one piece.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a one-piece protective padding assembly that can be attached or removed from within an outer hockey pant quickly and easily.
As embodied and broadly described herein, the present invention provides a hockey pant assembly comprising an outer pant having a right leg portion, a left leg portion and a pelvic region; and an inner protective padding comprising a protective girdle and a pair of front thigh padding protectors. The protective girdle comprises a rib padding protector and a hip padding protector. The inner protective padding is releasably connected to an upper portion of the outer pant; the inner protective padding adapted to be removable as a unit from said outer pant.
Advantageously, with a removable padding assembly the retailers would only have to stock one type of padding assembly, which is the more costly part of the hockey pant, and could then stock a variety of colors and styles of outer pants which are the less expensive part of the hockey pant. If there were some red outer pants left over at the end of the season, it would not be as big a loss to the retailer as to have completely assembled protective pants left over.
As embodied and broadly described herein, the present invention provides a hockey pant assembly kit comprising at least two outer pants each having a right leg portion, a left leg portion and a pelvic region; and an inner protective padding comprising a protective girdle and a pair of front thigh padding protectors. The inner protective padding is releasably connected one of the outer pants and is adapted to be removed from one of the outer pants and inserted into another one of the outer pants.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.